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Immerse yourself in nature’s many hues, shades, stripes, and wavelengths.
Dive into the color spectrum as you make your way through immersive rooms, each representing a color of the rainbow. In Wild Color, examine some of the brightest and boldest examples from our collections—alongside experiences designed to awaken your senses.
Anywhere you look in nature, color holds meaning. It evokes emotion, signals alarm, creates disguise and illusion. In this special exhibition, you’ll learn how to decode the hidden messages that different colors can send. Then, explore some of nature’s mysteries that are hidden in plain sight: creatures that change color, plants and animals that give off an eerie glow, and shades of color that the human eye can’t detect.
The exhibition is presented in both English and Spanish. La exhibición está presentada en inglés y español.
Play with your shadow! See what combinations of light and color you can create in a projection gallery.
Michelle Kuo
Escape the everyday and appreciate the wonder of color.
Exhibition highlights:
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Sensory rooms representing hues of the rainbow through light, texture, and sound
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A large-scale projection that lets you transform into a fluttering yellow butterfly
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Specimens including birds in every color and a platypus that fluoresces under UV light
Organ pipe coral gets its red color from the food that its living animals, called polyps, eat. Their food is full of pigments called carotenoids. You’ve probably eaten foods with carotenoids yourself, like carrots and tomatoes.
Michelle Kuo © Field Museum
A leaf insect (Phyllium siccifolium) almost exactly mimics the green leaves of plants—a highly effective form of camouflage.
Michelle Kuo © Field Museum
This brilliantly orange spiny oyster (Spondylus pictorum) lived off the coast of Mexico. Its spikes provided protection from shell-cracking crabs and fish and probably also provided places for smaller creatures, like sponges and bryozoans, to attach and grow.
Michelle Kuo © Field Museum
Tanagers, fruit-eating songbirds from South and North America, come in an astounding array of colors. These gorgeous colors come from actual pigments as well as tiny structures in the birds’ feathers that bounce back light in particular ways.
Michelle Kuo © Field Museum
Where do nature’s colors burst into your environment?
Share your vivid photos and tag @fieldmuseum and #WildColorField—you might see your photography appear in the Wild Color exhibition!
Acknowledgments
Wild Color was created by the Field Museum.
Major Sponsor
